Pfffsh, this stunt just blatantly ignores cause and effect, not to mention actual statistics.

Piracy has been rampant for decades now, yet the videogame industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Yeah, studios close down, but claiming that's because of piracy and acting like every illegally downloaded copy of a game equals to a lost sale is just ridiculous.

So I guess I wont ever buy this game. Or anything that studio produces in the future. Shame, the game looks pretty good.

So you intentionally ignore every argument, cherrypick what you like and then bitch at me for generalizing the whole discussion and not just you specifically? Wow. There's a tough one right here. How's it up there on that high horse? Weather good? Morality good? Yeah i can see that.

Lets get to the meat then.

Yes people still make games. It proves the industry is still chucking along. Is piracy making a dent in some of the undeserved profits? And please dont give me that usual tripe about how they are a business and exist to make money. People bitched why EA got the golden poop and not bank of america which is a bank thats whole point is money, i hate double standards. They are supposed to deliver Entertainment first, make money second. If nobody buys their shit, they make no money, if they fail to entertain, nobody buys anything and they go under. Its that simple. Now follow my example here because this HAS happened, namely to me.

I bought, oh many years ago, a game called Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising. It cost me 40 Euro. So i was happy, went home with my purchase, install it and expect a nice game, right? Wrong. It crashes, instantly, for no reason. I tried everything, updating drivers and such, reinstalling. Nothing helped. Even a whole system upgrade did nothing. So i go back to the store. And please not i have a right to get my money back if i return a defective product, or any product within 14 days with the reciept. Here's what i got "The game was opened, we do not take that back because you could have used a disk-burning program." Let that sink in, the store, not the publisher, not the developer, refused to return my money. How is bitching at the Developer or Publisher going to work? You know what "glorious" Steam does when you buy a hardcopy game that doesnt work and you complain to them "Please bitch at whoever sold it to you, it wasnt us". You think a publisher doesnt do the same thing? Its not fucking Sim City, its not "server problems" or "mass of disgruntled fans". Its one person who was refused a refund by a store. Ya think EA or whoever gives a shit?

That is a reason people pirate. Oh right, its bullshit. I forgot, wait, is the high horse buckling? Another example then.

Say you have 60 Dollars, 3 games come out, 3 games you are interested in, which do you buy? Well its easy, wait for reviews, right? What if there are no reviews for..i dont know, a week or so. And you are a very impulsive buyer. You just cant wait that one week, it happens. Now you buy the game, say Colonial Marines, or hey, maybe you pre-ordered and got a shitty game thats nothing like what was advertised. But thats not the point. So you cant get first reviews and have to decide on which game will get you the most for the money. Right, Demos! But oh wait, there are no demos, remember the good old days when you had them? I actually do, it was awesome, oh we got cherry-picked scenes, but at least we got a good feel for whats in store for us. So neither works and you really wanna decide but you cant, there are people who just are..fickle, lets look at modern military shooters, eh? So what do they do? Well pirate of course. They just do it to find out which game is worth their hard-earned 60 Bucks. Is that wrong? Well technically yes. But is it wrong on a moral level if you use it to prioritze which of those 3 deserves to be bought? Thats a personal viewpoint, throwing morals at it, wont change it. If morals worked, all those "Lulz because its free"-pirates would have stopped pirating long ago, clearly that aint working.

Again, those are the only 2 reasons i can understand, i dont defend them, but i understand them, i found myself in similar positions so i do not hold it against other people. There is a difference here. I dont beat them over the head with morality because, wanna know a dirty little secret? I used to pirate, alot, for that exact first example i mentioned. I pirated because i was sick of being refused a refund on a legitimate purchase. I pirated to find out if the games actually run on my system. I did that for a long while. Then, oh one day, i bought Fallout New Vegas, because i really wanted to own it. It demanded steam. I loathed steam because..well all my games in one place, kinda risky. But eh, went with it right? Then played the crap out of it, steam sale. I bought games, over steam, wow, impressive right? I have stopped pirating instantly, why? Because the games i now owned are worth more to me than pirating whatever because i dont want to risk losing what i bought. Thats how you both make a customer INTO a pirate and then back into a happy customer.

Are you now going to hold morals against me? Tell me how wrong that was of me and how i should be ashamed? Because here's the funny part, i dont really give a shit. No pirate gives a shit about your morals, how you think yourself somehow above them because you decided to pay. Is it wrong that they essentially steal? Quite frankly, yes. Thats why we got laws. Are they really gonna care about the moral argument? If they did, they wouldnt pirate. Thats the problem here. Everyone and their dog holds morals against pirates, demonizes them, bitches at them. Its not gonna work. That DRM thing of the Game Dev Tycoon guys? Its funny, really it is. But its not gonna work. People will continue to pirate it, they really dont care about the moral argument. I know. I was once one of these "unmoral people". People will continue to pirate for many reasons, some maybe understandable and somewhat legitimate, you wouldnt do it, but at least you can see what drove them to it. Others arent understandable, at all. I do not hold contempt for pirates simply because they pirate, i dont hold contempt for them at all. It is their business, they run risk of getting viruses and other nasties, it will happen eventually. But there are reasonings for it that i can understand, and that i cant understand. A pirate who pirates simply because he can, gains no sympathy from me, i dont understand it, if he can pay for it, why not buy it?

At the end of the day though, pirates will exist. No matter the DRM, no matter if the internet turns off, piracy will continue in some form. Because people are assholes. Some are really big assholes. They pirate because they can, because they want to send a message, because they feel slighted by the system, because..ponies. Thats really it. They simply do, there must not even be a reason for it. But the industry moves on, it still exists and as long as there is even a small part that buys games, it will continue. Its really that simple. As long as there is profit to be made, as long as its "worth it", games will be made, good and bad, they will be pirated, sold to second-hand shops and rebought. The industry wont die from that, so long as not suddenly everyone just pirates. So clearly, there is still enough value in the industry to continue, otherwise, they'd have stopped already, dont you think?

This problem isnt black and white and i refuse to make a anthill into a mountain because some publisher claims they lose money. They still make millions. They still make money of products they did not create. Tell me, who is the pirate here? Who is, morally speaking, the criminal? They drain developers of talent and ressources. They sell games at ridiculous prices, DLC and the like. What does the developer get for all that hard work, 20%? 30% maybe? Probably less. And 20% of 60$ isnt really that much. Sure it adds up over time but at the end of the day, the publisher still gets the most, all they did was be fat and sit around twiddling their thumbs, maybe making a few commercials. But they dont make the game, they dont really..do anything. They are worse than pirates. They do not simply take from someone else, they claim it as their own AND make money off of it.

If all that money went to the developer? If it really went to them, not some greedy rich fuck in some office who has last seen a game when it was in a arcade in the 80s, i'd understand the argument. If not some dumb ass can decide by a whim over which developer to keep and which to axe, then i'd understand. Neither is the case, so i will not side with them in their crusade against windmills because they feel, they should have even more money they do not deserve, or earn.Kickstarter is a first step. But until things like that are the norm? Yeah im not buying into the "Pirates ruined the industry" bullshit. Its as false now as it was 10 years ago. Also yes, before you get your panties in a twist, i was also generalizing, so dont feel offended. Of course if you think you should be, go right ahead.

Sorry to have to tell you this blackraven, but you "lost" (if you can call what that these shouting matches filled to the brim with hyperbole and logical fallicies that these anti-piracy people engage in actual debates) before you ever began. Like just about everybody here that argues against piracy, Resonance had this postion that "piracy is a crime therefore it's wrong" hammered into his whole life, decided it was completely correct without any leeway whatsoever, and decided to defend it to the death long before he saw this thread. Any reasonable person would have at least admitted that piracy is an understandable thing to do even if they don't agree with it within a couple posts. You might as well try to reason with a rock for all it'll accomplish.

Try quoting me if you're going to talk shit about me, mate.

talking about this game

1) it has a free demo

2) it's $8

3) the world owes you fuck all

So where's the justification to "try before you buy" or "HURRGH, AAA DEVELOPERS ARE EBIL" in this case?

I was just informing darkraven that his arguing with you is futile. You've made it quite clear pretty much from the moment you showed up on this thread that you only came here to shout your side from the rooftops, not actually debate anything, that you are completely unreasonable, are never are going to change your mind in the slightest no matter how many perfectly reasonable arguments people throw at you, (and there have been plenty) and when they do give perfectly reasonable arguments you won't admit it and just dismiss it out of hand without ever even considering it. However, if you insist...

The fact of the matter is people like convenience, and like it or not, Piracy provides a better, more convenient, and more affordable service all around even without the free factor than the all the legal ways of getting digitally distributable content. This is why piracy exists to begin with and why it will continue to exist for the forseeable future. To give you an analogy, developers and complaining about Piracy costing them sales are like those mom and pop stores complaining about going out of business because some big chain store opened up near them and provided a much cheaper and much better service. No, mom and pop stores/developers, you're not going out of business because that store opened up or losing sales because piracy exists, you're going out or losing sales because you can't or won't measure up, and worst of all, you won't admit that. That, and the fact that if people are pirating a game more than they are buying it, that means the game is crap. A good game would convert most of it's pirates that could afford it into paying customers because those pirates would want to see more games from that developer.

Besides, people are going to pirate a game no matter what, it is the responsiblity of the developer to make sure piracy is impossible and to entice them into purchasing rather than pirating, at least for the length of time it would take to get most of sales it's ever going to get. If a developer can't stop it, they deserve to have a lot of people pirate their games, it doesn't matter what position said developer is in either. It's just a modern version of the law of jungle "You can't keep an animal from killing and eating you in the jungle you deserve to be eaten" which has never truly and never will leave us. It sucks, I know, but that's the way the world is and in all likelyhood always will be.

That can easily be turned around. If the world owes me and everybody else "fuck all," I and everybody else owe the world just as much.

Your anaology falls apart when you consider that its ultimately impossiable to compete with a product downloaded for free, and you could use this argument as justifcation for stealing or counterfitting anything. Or at least, why buy books when you can just sit in the shop and read them?

Games cost time, money and effort to make, what do you think happens when devlopers don't get paid for their efforts?

But... this idea only covers the excuse that people don't have any money. What about when developers put in DRM and the like? Permanent online requirements? Having to re-buy a game to work on a new system? Having to re-buy a game because it was broken? What if people just want to try the game out before they buy it, but don't offer a demo, or the demo doesn't give a good "feel" of the game? It seems kind of silly to group pirates into the "Poor and Lazy Department" especially when there are so many other reasons someone might pirate something.

Dude DRM has been in computer games as long as computer games have existed:

As for your other ideas:1. Lack of demo - wait for reviews. Wait for Let's Plays. Often I can look at a game being played on youtube and know whether it's something I'll enjoy or not.

2. Permanent online, obtrusive DRM - don't buy it.

And to me all these reasons come down to simple rationalizations to avoid the facts: "I don't want to pay to play this game, so I'm going to come up with these reasons in order to tell myself that not paying is okay".

There are hundreds of games out there. If you find reasons like always online or whatever to not play a certain game, then go and play a different one! No one has time to play all the games.

I was really just pointing out how there were multiple reasons that someone might pirate something, but I can see what you mean, there are multiple reasons how you could "sample" a game before trying. We also seem to run into the demo problem and how with cheaper games they can actually REDUCE sales. Geeze... there seems to be no easy solution is there?

DaKiller:I don't get why the "It's not stealing because nothing was taken" defense makes sense to some people. Do people really think developers give half a shit about the disk the game is on or something? When I get games on steam have I not bought anything? If it isn't stealing it's at the very least counterfeiting, really good counterfeiting.

Counterfeiting is usually with the intent to sell a knockoff product.

Wikipedia:Counterfeit products are fake replicas of the real product. Counterfeit products are often produced with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product.

It's more like copying which is where the "Not stealing" idea comes in. In order to be stolen from you have to have a physical loss, but with copying the developer doesn't lose their copy. They have one and the pirate has one so there is no loss. Compound that with the fact that most copies are distributed for free, and the only "loss" is a perceived one from potential sales. Of course one could argue that if someone was downloading a pirated copy for free they had no intention to buy it in the first place, but that an entirely different ball game.

Voltano:While this could be a funny way of deterring pirates and teaching them a lesson, there are serious consequences the developers will have to contend with while doing stunts like these. "Titan's Quest" was a pretty good action RPG similar to "Diablo" at the time, and it had DRM that triggered a series of bugs in the game when it detected it was pirated.

The results turned out bad as several pirates reported the game was buggy and not as good, which discouraged legitimate customers from purchasing the game. Just as the Anodyne developers used piracy as a way to promote positive word-of-mouth feedback for their game, the developers for "Titan's Quest" accidentally made negative word-of-mouth feedback on their game due to DRM like this.

No I have the full versions of TQ (lovely golden steel case) + Immortal throne...it was just buggy as all shit at release and still has bad rubber banding issues.

Iron Lore shot themselves in the foot by doing what so many publishers do...releasing a poor quality (programming wise) game and trying to shift the blame on to piracy.

A-D.:Then, oh one day, i bought Fallout New Vegas, because i really wanted to own it. It demanded steam. I loathed steam because..well all my games in one place, kinda risky. But eh, went with it right? Then played the crap out of it, steam sale. I bought games, over steam, wow, impressive right? I have stopped pirating instantly, why? Because the games i now owned are worth more to me than pirating whatever because i dont want to risk losing what i bought. Thats how you both make a customer INTO a pirate and then back into a happy customer.

I find it genuinely remarkable that Steam has been able to market DRM like it's a service. It is actually more convenient to use steam than pretty much any other service. They really exposed a giant hole in the market for such great service and I genuinely hope crappy run-of-the-mill varieties chasing after it (like origin) fail to dilute their market share as long as they continue to provide this quality of service.

Is it wrong that they essentially steal? Quite frankly, yes. Thats why we got laws. Are they really gonna care about the moral argument? If they did, they wouldnt pirate. Thats the problem here.

Not everyone is the same. I could see pirates having lines they won't cross. Stealing from a small company whose pricing is completely reasonable? I'm sure some pirates draw a line there just like I'm sure real pirates let small local fishing vessels pass by unmolested.

This problem isnt black and white and i refuse to make a anthill into a mountain because some publisher claims they lose money. They still make millions. They still make money of products they did not create. Tell me, who is the pirate here? Who is, morally speaking, the criminal? They drain developers of talent and ressources. They sell games at ridiculous prices, DLC and the like. What does the developer get for all that hard work, 20%? 30% maybe? Probably less. And 20% of 60$ isnt really that much. Sure it adds up over time but at the end of the day, the publisher still gets the most, all they did was be fat and sit around twiddling their thumbs, maybe making a few commercials. But they dont make the game, they dont really..do anything. They are worse than pirates. They do not simply take from someone else, they claim it as their own AND make money off of it.

The developer gets to be gainfully employed doing what they love to do for years. Developing a game is developing a painting that requires people with varying skills to be able to put all the pieces together required to make a truly great game. Artists and writers get paid at the beginning of the project before the devs really get involved, developers and project managers get paid during the development cycle, and marketers and business peeps get employed throughout. The development company itself will hopefully reep a decent reward and will hopefully be closer to being able to publish or partially their own game next time around for even greater profits.

If a game then gets pirated enough to damage profits. People lose jobs. Independent studios have to put off their dreams of creating great content and end up working for a grocery store. At least the publishers were willing to pay them. Pirates take from the publishers and thereby harm the developers directly because the publishers won't be as likely to work with the developers again or invest as much money again due to the lackluster results of the previous title. If you're trying to make an argument on how sad that is for developers that they get to make a living and even profit at something they couldn't have afforded to make on their own because a publisher believed in them enough to front the costs of development and production then I fail to see where the victim is that pirates are somehow championing. It's not like they don't also rob from the small developers too when they'd be getting the money. Pirates aren't Robin Hood. That's just what they tell themselves to feel good about what they do. I'm sure actual thieves who steal physical goods like to identify as Robin Hood too.

You really need to stop looking at all publishers as an evil of some sort. Bethesda published Fallout New Vegas and thus gainfully employed Obsidian to develop it. It's not like Bethesda couldn't have developed it themselves, they made Fallout 3 that drastically changed the series forever in a way that proved that games can be worth the $60 or more. They new that Obsidian employed developers from Black Isle Studios that had made Fallout 2 and wanted them to be involved because Bethesda actually cares about the work they produce. This kind of stuff enables smaller developers to eventually get big enough to start producing their own games. Publishers take a serious risk every time they front the cash for these projects years before any return on investment can be obtained and are directly responsible for most of the big titles we enjoy today. They also provide significant distribution services that get the games into the hands of customers that actually want them. This is not a skillset that a small developer necessarily has. I wouldn't even call publishers a necessary evil. I'd call them a positive force in the world that helps to make the impossible possible for these studios. On a case by case basis *coughEAcough* I may call one or another evil. But they are generally the perfect tool for the industry.

The worst kind of Software Pirate is of course the one that cracks the code and makes it available online.

racrevel:Figured i would waste the $8 and buy it if anything i can see how much they copied from Game Dev Story

Do you have any idea when the first version of a "game development sim" came out? Long before Kairosoft who made it in 1997, that's for sure.

I dont know the name of the first ever game dev sim made so i cant say much for it but the half an hour i did manage to play of GDT just made is seem like the same game with a few changes, some i didn't mind others i wasn't a fan of, i probably would have played longer but as it wouldn't work on my mac i had to go find a pc to actually play it on which was a bit of a pain.

It would have been nice if they had gone for something of a different look, i can understand there are a limited options for genre's and such i just feel they could have done better as it really feels like a bad port of the app compared to other simulation games i have played, i dont know, maybe if they hadn't used the same bubble points system, selection setup for the games and maybe gave you some market competitors and something other than following how the console wars actually played out it might have felt different from the app, randomise it maybe create a world where pc's died and the virtual boy reigned supreme or where military strategy games were hated and i didn't know the exact path of the popularity of each console because i had played game dev story..

Maybe i shouldn't have use the word copied but its a pretty fitting word after playing it, i will give it another shot if it works on the mac in the next week but if not i will skip it till next friday.

I think it would've worked better if the pirated copy stole your personal information/passwords/credit card details/all three and then made it public on various websites while going "Just copying & sharing, nothing wrong here!"

We'd see if people are still willing to believe information wants to be free when it's their information.

So where's the justification to "try before you buy" or "HURRGH, AAA DEVELOPERS ARE EBIL" in this case?

I was just informing darkraven that his arguing with you is futile. You've made it quite clear pretty much from the moment you showed up on this thread that you only came here to shout your side from the rooftops, not actually debate anything, that you are completely unreasonable, are never are going to change your mind in the slightest no matter how many perfectly reasonable arguments people throw at you, (and there have been plenty) and when they do give perfectly reasonable arguments you won't admit it and just dismiss it out of hand without ever even considering it. However, if you insist...

The fact of the matter is people like convenience, and like it or not, Piracy provides a better, more convenient, and more affordable service all around even without the free factor than the all the legal ways of getting digitally distributable content. This is why piracy exists to begin with and why it will continue to exist for the forseeable future. To give you an analogy, developers and complaining about Piracy costing them sales are like those mom and pop stores complaining about going out of business because some big chain store opened up near them and provided a much cheaper and much better service. No, mom and pop stores/developers, you're not going out of business because that store opened up or losing sales because piracy exists, you're going out or losing sales because you can't or won't measure up, and worst of all, you won't admit that. That, and the fact that if people are pirating a game more than they are buying it, that means the game is crap. A good game would convert most of it's pirates that could afford it into paying customers because those pirates would want to see more games from that developer.

Besides, people are going to pirate a game no matter what, it is the responsiblity of the developer to make sure piracy is impossible and to entice them into purchasing rather than pirating, at least for the length of time it would take to get most of sales it's ever going to get. If a developer can't stop it, they deserve to have a lot of people pirate their games, it doesn't matter what position said developer is in either. It's just a modern version of the law of jungle "You can't keep an animal from killing and eating you in the jungle you deserve to be eaten" which has never truly and never will leave us. It sucks, I know, but that's the way the world is and in all likelyhood always will be.

That can easily be turned around. If the world owes me and everybody else "fuck all," I and everybody else owe the world just as much.

Your anaology falls apart when you consider that its ultimately impossiable to compete with a product downloaded for free, and you could use this argument as justifcation for stealing or counterfitting anything. Or at least, why buy books when you can just sit in the shop and read them?

Games cost time, money and effort to make, what do you think happens when devlopers don't get paid for their efforts?

Developers and publishers can compete with free. How can they compete? Easy, they could lower the prices to the absolute minimum needed to cover the development costs and still make a profit, lowering it further once those costs are met, they could make sure their distribution method functions easily and conveniently, they can provide perks to loyal customers that stick by them and purchase their products legally, they could add unobtrusive commericals and other ads so they can make money without having to charge much of anything, and so on, the ways are pretty much endless. Piracy is a competitive force in many industries and always has been, yet not a one of those industries have ever died out due to piracy, in fact it's barely made a blip on their profit margins.

When developers don't get paid for their efforts, they die out, the same as with anyone that creates anything in any other industry. It is not the fault of the pirates that this happens, it's the fault of the developer and publisher. It is the job of the developers to make a game good enough that most people want to buy it rather than just get it for free, and it's the job of the publisher to provide a means of distribution that is affordable and convenient enough that piracy looks like the worse option, and if they can't accomplish this they deserve whatever loss of profit the get. Piracy has exists in some form throughout history and always will exist, it can't be stopped. People can argue about it their entire lives long about whether it's good or not, but this fact cannot be denied. What everybody should be doing is not trying to wipe it out, what they should be doing is working with and around it, capitalizing on it's benefits while minimizing it's detrimental effects, just like anything else that's always been around and always will really.

I think it would've worked better if the pirated copy stole your personal information/passwords/credit card details/all three and then made it public on various websites while going "Just copying & sharing, nothing wrong here!"

We'd see if people are still willing to believe information wants to be free when it's their information.

That would land the developers in jail for some time.

This isn't just a great idea. It's metro. A game developer made a fake copy of a game about creating games in which the company goes bankrupt due to potential revenue being lost to piracy. We've basically been treated to poetry here without breaking the law.

Wandering_Hero:Unless those figures actually translate into sales, at the end of the day it doesn't do the indie devloper much good.

Of course it translates to sales. The only ways I can think of that it wouldn't is if 1. everybody pirated (which is clearly not the case, as this thread wouldn't have spawned a ten page debate if it were), or 2. only pirates are interested in the concept of the game and nobody else is (so it would have to be a game that was specifically designed that only pirates would be interested in it, which is kind of hard to do and is especially hard to do by accident), or 3. it just isn't that good of a game, and it wouldn't have made many sales anyway.

Wandering_Hero:It might have seemed "awesome" when over 90% of people pirated Goo to get that great player base up, but although the game is rated highly this didn't do much for its sales.

Yeah, you see this with movies as well, where something gets a fairly high critical reception, but audiences are mostly uninterested for one reason or another. It's sad when that happens, but it's just how things work. You can usually minimize the probability of that sort of thing during development though, it's mostly about how the game is designed.

So you intentionally ignore every argument, cherrypick what you like and then bitch at me for generalizing the whole discussion and not just you specifically? Wow. There's a tough one right here. How's it up there on that high horse? Weather good? Morality good? Yeah i can see that.

Lets get to the meat then.

Yes people still make games. It proves the industry is still chucking along. Is piracy making a dent in some of the undeserved profits? And please dont give me that usual tripe about how they are a business and exist to make money. People bitched why EA got the golden poop and not bank of america which is a bank thats whole point is money, i hate double standards. They are supposed to deliver Entertainment first, make money second. If nobody buys their shit, they make no money, if they fail to entertain, nobody buys anything and they go under. Its that simple. Now follow my example here because this HAS happened, namely to me.

I bought, oh many years ago, a game called Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising. It cost me 40 Euro. So i was happy, went home with my purchase, install it and expect a nice game, right? Wrong. It crashes, instantly, for no reason. I tried everything, updating drivers and such, reinstalling. Nothing helped. Even a whole system upgrade did nothing. So i go back to the store. And please not i have a right to get my money back if i return a defective product, or any product within 14 days with the reciept. Here's what i got "The game was opened, we do not take that back because you could have used a disk-burning program." Let that sink in, the store, not the publisher, not the developer, refused to return my money. How is bitching at the Developer or Publisher going to work? You know what "glorious" Steam does when you buy a hardcopy game that doesnt work and you complain to them "Please bitch at whoever sold it to you, it wasnt us". You think a publisher doesnt do the same thing? Its not fucking Sim City, its not "server problems" or "mass of disgruntled fans". Its one person who was refused a refund by a store. Ya think EA or whoever gives a shit?

Dude save for your sob stories and your rants. You can use whatever sad experiences and tales you have to prop up your own sense of self worth but your actions remain the same. I don't care.

Furthermore I have not in one of my posts mentioned the word "morality". That's something that you're bringing up on your own accord, and in doing so you're trying to put it on me? You complain when I don't quote your needlessly long rants for the sake of being clear and concise, and yet when you reply you show a basic lack of understanding of what I've said because in two replies you've misrepresented me twice. You're batting a thousand for not knowing what you're talking about.

I've never said "morality" or "poor folks" so either you're talking to the wrong person, or you just don't know what you're talking about. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the latter because the former is a greater failing.

The most ironic thing that is consistent with every one of you people replying to me is that your justification for piracy largely depends upon a dehumanization of the developer. In order to feel justified in doing what you're doing, you treat developers as a single entity. One bad game suddenly entitled you to steal from everyone. Being converted into a paying customer by buying a game from company A suddenly erases or justifies any failings when you stole from company B, C, D and F.

In short, your perspective on developers mirrors the perspective that people allege a company like Electronic Arts to have. EA dehumanizes the consumer and just wants your money because it's a corporation. You dehumanize the developers and just want free games because you're a pirate.

It's sad. Really.

So next time you pirate a game, and go rant on a forum about corporation X are bad guys for doing what they're doing, for not giving a shit about you, then go look in the mirror and get some insight into their world because the two worlds are not so far apart.

Ilikemilkshake:It's a bit heavy handed but still kind of funny, especially that the pirates then went on the forums and started complaining.

Heavy handed? How? He releases a cracked version on the net that functianoly doesn't work and is designed to teach a lesson (that is lost on almost everyone who suffers from it more then likely). How is that heavy handed? No DRM or anything, heavy handed?

Lots of games do stuff like this, I remember there was an asian porn game that the pirated version would forward a whole bunch of stuff about you playing the game to social media outlets, and then there have been several games in ameica that use a similar thing, ghostbusters and the candlesticks being one.

Akalabeth:You think a developer should feel grateful people are stealing his game? What world do you live in? Maybe you should feel grateful when someone makes sexist remarks to your girlfriend. After all, if no one openly comments on how great her ass is it must mean she's not very attractive right? That's the sort of logic you're dealing.

Not really. My girlfriend's ass is for me and her to enjoy, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of it. A game, on the other hand, is written for an audience, and it definitely matters what the audience thinks of it, especially if you plan on making any sales. As a starting indie developer, and as someone who doesn't pirate games, I for one can most certainly say that the prospect of any of my content being pirated is wonderful. There are two reasons for this:

One, pretty much every gamer either has a very strong opinion about piracy, or doesn't even consider it as an option. That means there is a set percentage of people who are pirates, and a set percentage who aren't, and you can't change any of their minds so it's useless to try. Therefore, given that your game is appealing to a randomly mixed subset of pirates and non-pirates (which is generally the case unless you draw attention to piracy, like putting a terrible DRM on it or something), the size of that subset is directly proportional to both the piracy rate and the number of sales. Basically, if the game you made is actually good, a higher piracy rate will tend to mean more sales, and a lower piracy rate will tend to mean fewer sales.

Two, it's not about the money anyway. Writing games is a form of art, it's about creating something and showing it to people and being happy if a lot of people enjoy it. If making sure every single one of those people gives you money is more important to you, then you're making games for the wrong reasons, and that probably means you aren't making very good games.

In an ironic twist, modified code in the cracked version of the game ensures that pirate's in-game progress is constantly ruined by rampant piracy.

What happens when pirates play a game development simulator and then go bankrupt because of piracy? This is the question asked by Game Dev Tycoon developer Green Heart Games. In a curious social experiment, the developer deliberately uploaded a full, cracked version of its game to the most popular torrent trackers. The cracked version is nearly identical to the real thing except for one detail. As players spend a few hours playing and growing their own game dev company, they will start to see the following message, styled like any other in-game message:

"Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally. If players don't buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt."

Slowly, the player's in-game funds will dwindle, and every new game that they create has a high chance to be pirated until they eventually go bankrupt. There is no way to fight it, in an ironic twist, players of the cracked version of the game are doomed to constant failure due to rampant piracy.

But even more hilarious are the pleas for help that the pirates have posted on the official forums, not knowing that they have unwittingly outed themselves as pirates.

The developer said that it has conducted this social experiment as a way to try and open gamer's eyes to just how damaging piracy can be. The depressing results of its own game's day one piracy rates show that only 6.4% of people playing the game bought it legitimately.

"To the players who played the cracked version, I'm not mad at you," says Patrick Klug of Green Heart Games. "When I was younger, downloading illegal copies was practically normal but this was mostly because global game distribution was in its infancy." He says that the wide availability of the game online, as well as the fact that it has a free demo and comes with no DRM means that gamers these days have no excuse for pirating the game.

"If years down the track you wonder why there are no games like these anymore and all you get to play is pay-to-play and social games designed to suck money out of your pockets then the reason will stare back at you in the mirror," warns Klugg, on a website set up to specifically target people looking for a cracked version, asking them nicely to reconsider.

"We are just two guys working our butts off, trying to start our own game studio to create games which are fun to play," says Klugg. Amen to that brother. If you agree with him, and can spare the eight bucks, you can buy the game for Mac, Linux and Windows from the Green Heart Games website.

Now thats how you deny pirates the right to play...not legal action, BUT BY FUCKING WITH THEM!!!!

pirate battlefield 4? every time you spawn in the campaign or multiplayer a pirate ship crashes on you instantly killing you, you spawn again hanging by the gallows not being able to play as everyone laughs at your cheap ass!

Akalabeth:You think a developer should feel grateful people are stealing his game? What world do you live in? Maybe you should feel grateful when someone makes sexist remarks to your girlfriend. After all, if no one openly comments on how great her ass is it must mean she's not very attractive right? That's the sort of logic you're dealing.

Not really. My girlfriend's ass is for me and her to enjoy, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of it. A game, on the other hand, is written for an audience, and it definitely matters what the audience thinks of it, especially if you plan on making any sales. As a starting indie developer, and as someone who doesn't pirate games, I for one can most certainly say that the prospect of any of my content being pirated is wonderful. There are two reasons for this:

You clearly don't understand the comparison.Piracy is ultimately disrespectful to the developer. If one suggests that a game's level of piracy is indicative of quality, and further that a developer should thus be grateful for piracy because it suggests quality, then what you are actually saying is that you should be happy to be disrespected. Because the more disrespect you receive, the more your item or person is worth.

Two, it's not about the money anyway. Writing games is a form of art, it's about creating something and showing it to people and being happy if a lot of people enjoy it. If making sure every single one of those people gives you money is more important to you, then you're making games for the wrong reasons, and that probably means you aren't making very good games.

I was wondering when that predictable rational would come up.

"Games are art, and since an artist creates art to be experienced by individuals then an artist should be grateful that people are experiencing his game whether they're paying for it or not"

Right?Wrong.

As an artist I can tell you that people like you devalue what art means. Art is all around us, it gives meaning and purpose to lives, yet people like you say the artist should be grateful that people are experiencing it?

Akalabeth:You clearly don't understand the comparison.Piracy is ultimately disrespectful to the developer. If one suggests that a game's level of piracy is indicative of quality, and further that a developer should thus be grateful for quality, then what you are actually saying is that you should be happy to be disrespected. Because the more disrespect you receive, the more your item or person is worth.

You seem to be making some of three different, but related, unfounded assumptions here:

One is that "developers feel disrespected by piracy". This is true, many do, and that's the problem. Many developers become so caught up in the offense they take from piracy that they choose to take actions (such as bad DRMs) that may end up losing them sales. My suggestion is that they don't take offense, because that leaves time for them to do more important things, like come up with better, more relevant ways to improve their sales.

Another is that "pirates pirate primarily as a conscious act of disrespect". This is, I'm sorry to say, completely untrue and laughably so. What would be the point? It doesn't affect the sales at all if you pirate a game you don't like. It doesn't affect the pirate in any positive way either, it's just a waste of his time. The only time this does have any kind of validity is in cases with terrible DRM schemes (like Spore), but even then, no disrespect is meant toward the developers/the game itself, but only to the publishers/the way in which it was presented. When this happens, it happens because of a conscious effort to combat piracy, and it can be easily avoided (see previous paragraph).

The last is that "I, Akalabeth, feel disrespected when people pirate". Frankly, this is your own problem and is irrelevant to the conversation. Sorry.

Akalabeth:artists are grateful to make a living creating art that can be experienced.

And they make a living by people paying them money for their fucking work!

I understand the need to make a living. If you aren't paid for your art, you'd have to make a living doing something you didn't enjoy, and that means you wouldn't have anywhere near as much time to create content. I totally get that. But then, why would you want to create more content? Isn't the answer to that, because you want more of it to be experienced? Isn't that still the goal, where making a living is just a means? If not, then what is the goal? It's not the money itself, you'd have chosen a higher-paying career path if that was the case. It could be (it probably is, in fact) that you just enjoy the process of creating the content, and that's fantastic, but it's much better if someone else would recognize the effort you put into it and enjoy it with you. Am I wrong?

I think artists should certainly make a living from their art. But I recognize that piracy isn't going away, no matter how much people complain about it, and that the best thing to do is to accept it and move on. After all, even with a high piracy rate, you're still making a living, because there will always be people who are willing to spend money for your work. Is the prospect that you may or may not be making quite as much money as you otherwise might so terrible that you take offense from those who aren't so charitable? Even though those people very likely wouldn't have paid for it anyway, and simply wouldn't have experienced your game at all, if they didn't pirate it? Would you rather have X sales and X experiences than X sales and X + Y experiences? Because I like the second one better, personally.

Akalabeth:You clearly don't understand the comparison.Piracy is ultimately disrespectful to the developer. If one suggests that a game's level of piracy is indicative of quality, and further that a developer should thus be grateful for quality, then what you are actually saying is that you should be happy to be disrespected. Because the more disrespect you receive, the more your item or person is worth.

You seem to be making some of three different, but related, unfounded assumptions here:

One is that "developers feel disrespected by piracy". This is true, many do, and that's the problem. Many developers become so caught up in the offense they take from piracy that they choose to take actions (such as bad DRMs) that may end up losing them sales. My suggestion is that they don't take offense, because that leaves time for them to do more important things, like come up with better, more relevant ways to improve their sales.

Another is that "pirates pirate primarily as a conscious act of disrespect". This is, I'm sorry to say, completely untrue and laughably so.

Let's see, I've spent this whole conversation talking about pirates have nothing but rationalizations to convince themselves what they're doing okay. So what about that line of reasoning suggests conscious disrespect?

The last is that "I, Akalabeth, feel disrespected when people pirate". Frankly, this is your own problem and is irrelevant to the conversation. Sorry.

Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?

Three assumptions. Two of them completely wrong. One of them right and in favour of what I'm saying.

So why are we still talking?

The point I have contention with is that piracy does not help developers as many people are fooling themselves into believing. That's the point in contention. Discussions about whether DRM affects sales or not is outside the scope of the discussion beyond the fact it's another excuse for people to tell themselves when they lay awake at night.

Akalabeth:artists are grateful to make a living creating art that can be experienced.

And they make a living by people paying them money for their fucking work!

I understand the need to make a living. If you aren't paid for your art, you'd have to make a living doing something you didn't enjoy, and that means you wouldn't have anywhere near as much time to create content. I totally get that. But then, why would you want to create more content? Isn't the answer to that, because you want more of it to be experienced?

Not every artist lives to create experiences. Some create art for their own sake and would like nothign better than to create and not have it experience by anyone.

So no, your assumption is false. And the foundation of your reasoning is false. Artist, whether they be game designers, musicians, whatever, their dream is to live their life doing what they LOVE. What they love is creating. A by product of creating is getting feedback by people who experience their work but it is a BY PRODUCT. Not the primary goal.

And what enables them to live their life doing what they love? Being paid for it.

One of the rationales in this thread for piracy is "why pay for a game that isn't very good".

Take the scenario where a talented but inexperienced game designer creates a game. It's a failure. Because it's a failure no one pays for it. Because no one pays for it, he doesn't make any subsequent games. And because he doesn't make any new games, he quits his career and all the great games he COULD HAVE made will no longer be made.

Compare this to the opposite. Guy makes a game, not very good. People pay for it. He has money to make a second. It's a better game. People pay for it. He has money to make a third. It's an even better game. People pay for it. He h as money to make a fourth. It's a brilliant game.

I mean if someone's gonna pirate, then whatever, do what you're gonna do.But don't waste your time and mine telling me that what you do benefits anyone but yourself.

I think artists should certainly make a living from their art. But I recognize that piracy isn't going away, no matter how much people complain about it, and that the best thing to do is to accept it and move on. After all, even with a high piracy rate, you're still making a living, because there will always be people who are willing to spend money for your work.

"There are problems in the world, and there's nothing we can do that will fix them, so why bother trying"

DaKiller:I don't get why the "It's not stealing because nothing was taken" defense makes sense to some people. Do people really think developers give half a shit about the disk the game is on or something? When I get games on steam have I not bought anything? If it isn't stealing it's at the very least counterfeiting, really good counterfeiting.

The problem with the stealing accusation, is that it's a cop-out. A thought-terminating cliché to use when you run out of all arguments against piracy.

When it is asked "What's wrong with pirating a game instead of buying it?" The obvious answer is "It makes the creators have less money for future development. You should support the arts".

But when someone asks "What's wrong with pirating a game that I wouldn't/couldn't have bought [for various reasons]?", then suddenly everyone starts to scream "It's wrong BECAUSE IT'S THEFT/BECAUSE IT'S NOT YOURS TO TAKE/BECAUSE IT'S THEIR PROPERTY/BECAUSE IT'S ILLEGAL"

Even though they all pretend that there is supposed to be this overarching logical, economical, and practical reason for why file-sharing is bad, yet as soon as you would find examples of cases where these don't apply, everyone who just wants to argue against file-sharing out of tradition, will fall back to circular reasonings and tautologies about how file-sharing is classified by current copyright law as "piracy", hence it violates the publishers "rights" to certain authority over data distribution, therefore it's "taking away stuff from them".

I think artists should certainly make a living from their art. But I recognize that piracy isn't going away, no matter how much people complain about it, and that the best thing to do is to accept it and move on. After all, even with a high piracy rate, you're still making a living, because there will always be people who are willing to spend money for your work.

"There are problems in the world, and there's nothing we can do that will fix them, so why bother trying"

That's your philosophy in a nutshell.I don't agree.

And sometimes there are problems in the world, that only exist because you decided to declare them problems.

Piracy is a crime that only exist to begin with, because late 20th century governments decided to criminalize personal, non-profit copying of data, under an expansion of older copyright laws.

Not because it's self-evident from Natural Law, or because it's a logical conclusion of property laws, but because when a new technology appears, the public and the industr fight over who gets to control it, and one of them wins.

If in 1984, Universal studios would have won the Betamax lawsuit, then ever since then, we would have a huge problem of people illegally recording TV shows for the purpose of time-shifting, and Universal and co. would be arguing that every re-watched movie can be a theoretical lost sale to them and that's terrible.

Just because publishers decided that they do own a certain aspect of copyright, that doesn't make it so, and even if laws happen to agree with them right now in the case of file-sharing, it wouldn't necessarily be the first time that laws went too far unjustly banning something poentially harmless.

I think artists should certainly make a living from their art. But I recognize that piracy isn't going away, no matter how much people complain about it, and that the best thing to do is to accept it and move on. After all, even with a high piracy rate, you're still making a living, because there will always be people who are willing to spend money for your work.

"There are problems in the world, and there's nothing we can do that will fix them, so why bother trying"

That's your philosophy in a nutshell.I don't agree.

And sometimes there are problems in the world, that only exist because you decided to declare them problems.

Piracy is a crime that only exist to begin with, because late 20th century governments decided to criminalize personal, non-profit copying of data, under an expansion of older copyright laws.

I would not consider a person who's unable to make enough money to sustain themselves a "declared problem". It's a real problem. And if that problem is the result of people stealing rather than paying to play their game then the problem is self evident.

If in 1984, Universal studios would have won the Betamax lawsuit, then ever since then, we would have a huge problem of people illegally recording TV shows for the purpose of time-shifting, and Universal and co. would be arguing that every re-watched movie can be a theoretical lost sale to them and that's terrible.

Just because publishers decided that they do own a certain aspect of copyright, that doesn't make it so, and even if laws happen to agree with them right now in the case of file-sharing, it wouldn't necessarily be the first time that laws went too far unjustly banning something poentially harmless.

Your logic is flawed.You use the extreme example of a case that did not become precedent to prove that what is precedent is unjustified.

The extremes of a law that does not exist does not question the legitimacy of laws that do exist. Quite the contrary, I would suggest. So your what ifs and maybes don't exactly hold water.

Ilikemilkshake:It's a bit heavy handed but still kind of funny, especially that the pirates then went on the forums and started complaining.

Heavy handed? How? He releases a cracked version on the net that functianoly doesn't work and is designed to teach a lesson (that is lost on almost everyone who suffers from it more then likely). How is that heavy handed? No DRM or anything, heavy handed?

Lots of games do stuff like this, I remember there was an asian porn game that the pirated version would forward a whole bunch of stuff about you playing the game to social media outlets, and then there have been several games in ameica that use a similar thing, ghostbusters and the candlesticks being one.

I've already said this in another post but I'll say again to clarify. I'm not saying they shouldn't have done this but the way they portray their message is a bit ham fisted. In the cracked version you will with 100% certainty go out of business due to piracy, this isn't what happens in real life. In fact they're actually a prime example of the opposite being the case as they've probably benefited alot from all the exposure that piracy has brought to them...

I would not consider a person who's unable to make enough money to sustain themselves a "declared problem". It's a real problem. And if that problem is the result of people stealing rather than paying to play their game then the problem is self evident.

First of all, some evidence that file-sharing actually leads to less creators making a profit, would be nice instead of the usual "90% appears to be a really freaking large number, so let's just assume that it includes some people who would have bought the game otherwise, and that their numbers are greater than of those who were inspired by the ten times larger fandom to buy it."

Second, even if it would be the case, you don't have a basic human right to get employed at any job that you can think of. We used to have one here in Hungary, until 24 years ago. It was even in the constitution and everything. It was the government's role to provide everyone a job, whether there was demand for it or not.

But in a capitalism, sometimes professions become less profitable over time. Demanding the government to keep around monopolistic regulations and limit the usage of new technologies, just so people can always make at least as much profit from a type of job as now, simply doesn't fly.

Your logic is flawed.You use the extreme example of a case that did not become precedent to prove that what is precedent is unjustified.

I'm not trying to argue that this proves all copyright to be immoral, just that this is an example that conceptually speaking, giving publishers too much control over their IP *could be* possible, and even such a world, one could parrot the same justifications to it that you are saying right now.

About how IP holders' will must be respected, about how limiting them *at all* might theoretically limit their profitability and make it harder to make a living for them, and how it is a problem for those people.

In such a "what if" world, how would YOU argue against the excesses of copyright? Because in this our, your arguments in favor of copyright need to be at least as good.

What makes your trust and acceptance of all the current extents of copyright, more than an automatic faith in whatever happens to be tradition and law?

No, I'm sorry but this is not a shitty world, the only thing that's shitty here is your justifications and your perspective.

I'm sorry that you're unable to empathize with someone who's working his ass off to create a game that you feel entitled to steal. You talk to me about charity? You know that charity depends upon giving a shit for someone else? And yet you come up with all sorts of rationalizations why giving a shit for a developer is something you don't need to do? That you feel entitled not to do? Of having not done?

You think a developer should feel grateful people are stealing his game? What world do you live in? Maybe you should feel grateful when someone makes sexist remarks to your girlfriend. After all, if no one openly comments on how great her ass is it must mean she's not very attractive right? That's the sort of logic you're dealing.

Discussion over.

Except he pirated games in his youth, so.. again why should ANYONE care about the fact that he is having HIS game pirated now?

He justified it by saying "Games weren't readily available in my youth" (Paraphrasing), Okay. Well, money is not readily available in this recession, so I guess we are even eh?

Because this is a discussion about piracy in general, not piracy as it relates to this specific developer.

As many people have previously said. This is about pirating an "Eight Dollar Game". He pirated games, so why should I feel bad that he got his game pirated now. Answer is. I shouldn't. The only reason he cares about it now, is that it is his game. I can guarantee you, he did not care about whose job he was killing, or whose family he was stealing from when he did it, so he can take his self righteous "You dirty pirates" Message and shove it.

I would not consider a person who's unable to make enough money to sustain themselves a "declared problem". It's a real problem. And if that problem is the result of people stealing rather than paying to play their game then the problem is self evident.

First of all, some evidence that file-sharing actually leads to less creators making a profit, would be nice instead of the usual "90% appears to be a really freaking large number, so let's just assume that it includes some people who would have bought the game otherwise, and that their numbers are greater than of those who were inspired by the ten times larger fandom to buy it."

Every pirate who tells you that "Stealing a game and paying for it later" is okay is evidence that they make less profit. Because paying for a game later usually means paying less for the game than at the time you played it.

Second, even if it would be the case, you don't have a basic human right to get employed at any job that you can think of. We used to have one here in Hungary, until 24 years ago. It was even in the constitution and everything. It was the government's role to provide everyone a job, whether there was demand for it or not.

But in a capitalism, sometimes professions become less profitable over time. Demanding the government to keep around monopolistic regulations and limit the usage of new technologies, just so people can always make at least as much profit from a type of job as now, simply doesn't fly.

So, now the argument is "you don't have a right to be a game designer, therefore I have a right to play your game without paying for it?"

Really?

You see there's a difference between someone:A - Making a product, have people not buy or use it, and the business failing as a resultB - Making a product, have people use it but not pay for it, and the business failing as a result

What makes your trust and acceptance of all the current extents of copyright, more than an automatic faith in whatever happens to be tradition and law?

This question is paradoxical.

Common Law is based upon tradition and precedence. All laws are built upon the examples and cases that have come before it. Copyright law does not exist as some separate entity outside of normal tradition, rather it is the interpretation of the tradition and precedence as it applies to the medium.

Therefore faith in copyright law is faith in the tradition of the law as we know it.

Except he pirated games in his youth, so.. again why should ANYONE care about the fact that he is having HIS game pirated now?

He justified it by saying "Games weren't readily available in my youth" (Paraphrasing), Okay. Well, money is not readily available in this recession, so I guess we are even eh?

Because this is a discussion about piracy in general, not piracy as it relates to this specific developer.

As many people have previously said. This is about pirating an "Eight Dollar Game". He pirated games, so why should I feel bad that he got his game pirated now. Answer is. I shouldn't. The only reason he cares about it now, is that it is his game. I can guarantee you, he did not care about whose job he was killing, or whose family he was stealing from when he did it, so he can take his self righteous "You dirty pirates" Message and shove it.

Is there a reason you're putting Eight Dollar Game in quotation marks? Is the game less valuable and therefore less of a problem to pirate it because of the price?

What you as a youth (presumably) don't understand is that wisdom is a product of age. And while he may have fileshared in the past his perspective is now different. You would be wise yourself to listen to the advice and opinions of your elders so that you can benefit from what they know and in part avoid making the same mistakes they have. Instead however, you're just using it as further justification to do something unjustified.

If a boy once beat up a boy in school, should we feel no empathy for them when they're getting beat up as an adult? Not listen to their plea for assistance? That's essentially the philosophy you're promoting.

And if in your youth you make a mistake and someone holds it against you in your adult life and chooses to not respect what you have to say when you need respect the most, then remember this lesson and learn from it.

Because this is a discussion about piracy in general, not piracy as it relates to this specific developer.

As many people have previously said. This is about pirating an "Eight Dollar Game". He pirated games, so why should I feel bad that he got his game pirated now. Answer is. I shouldn't. The only reason he cares about it now, is that it is his game. I can guarantee you, he did not care about whose job he was killing, or whose family he was stealing from when he did it, so he can take his self righteous "You dirty pirates" Message and shove it.

Is there a reason you're putting Eight Dollar Game in quotation marks? Is the game less valuable and therefore less of a problem to pirate it because of the price?

What you as a youth (presumably) don't understand is that wisdom is a product of age. And while he may have fileshared in the past his perspective is now different. You would be wise yourself to listen to the advice and opinions of your elders so that you can benefit from what they know and in part avoid making the same mistakes they have. Instead however, you're just using it as further justification to do something unjustified.

If a boy once beat up a boy in school, should we feel no empathy for them when they're getting beat up as an adult? Not listen to their plea for assistance? That's essentially the philosophy you're promoting.

And if in your youth you make a mistake and someone holds it against you in your adult life and chooses to not respect what you have to say when you need respect the most, then remember this lesson.

I am perfectly fine with making someone who did something wrong in the past, which again you have pointed out many times, is illegal, suffer in the future. Especially since the person in question is saying that when he did it was fine, but all of us who do it now should be punished and should suffer for it.

And actually yes, I am perfectly fine with that kind of philosophy. He did something wrong, he took no issue with him doing it wrong, into adulthood he still says it was justified, but because it now effects him he doesn't want it to happen anymore. So no, I have no sympathy for him, I would if maybe, he would at least admit that what he did was wrong, but no. He says it was fine, it was justified.

And yea, I have learned something from him, if I say it is alright to do it, it is, as long as I feel it is.

Every pirate who tells you that "Stealing a game and paying for it later" is okay is evidence that they make less profit. Because paying for a game later usually means paying less for the game than at the time you played it.

Like most other lost sale arguments, this has the problem of not knowing whether these people's no-piracy alternative woulld have been to buy everything earlier, or they would have spent the same amount of money on gaming and go without until they are cheap enough to afford them.

So, now the argument is "you don't have a right to be a game designer, therefore I have a right to play your game without paying for it?"

Really?

You see there's a difference between someone:A - Making a product, have people not buy or use it, and the business failing as a resultB - Making a product, have people use it but not pay for it, and the business failing as a result

Common Law is based upon tradition and precedence. All laws are built upon the examples and cases that have come before it. Copyright law does not exist as some separate entity outside of normal tradition, rather it is the interpretation of the tradition and precedence as it applies to the medium.

Therefore faith in copyright law is faith in the tradition of the law as we know it.

Yet there is such a thing as "unjust laws", and "Appeal to Tradition" is considered a logical fallacy for a reason.

By your own claim, you basically admit, that no matter how strict copyright laws could possibly be, even if they could have stifled all Fair Use in the bud, never given chance for passage to Public Domain over time, it could have banned all second-hand sales, etc, and no one that it would be applied to, should ever question it, as long as it represents the tradition of the law.

Conversely, if a few decades ago, as personal copying took the spotlight, it could have been decided that it's an individual's right that publishers shall not infringe upon, and then now all piracy would be legal, and therefore moral.

By your own logic, file-sharing ("piracy") in Switzerland is legal, therefore right now, it's morally nothing like theft over there.

Three assumptions. Two of them completely wrong. One of them right and in favour of what I'm saying.

So why are we still talking?

I told you that those were the only three possible assumptions I could think of, and that you may have one or more of them, so I just decided to address them all. I suppose the one that was right was that "developers feel disrespected by piracy"? Alright, let's talk about that then.

Akalabeth:The point I have contention with is that piracy does not help developers as many people are fooling themselves into believing.

... oh, okay. Or not, I suppose.

Akalabeth:Not every artist lives to create experiences. Some create art for their own sake and would like nothign better than to create and not have it experience by anyone.

Then those people aren't going to care about piracy because they're never going to distribute their art in the first place ...

Akalabeth:So no, your assumption is false. And the foundation of your reasoning is false. Artist, whether they be game designers, musicians, whatever, their dream is to live their life doing what they LOVE. What they love is creating. A by product of creating is getting feedback by people who experience their work but it is a BY PRODUCT. Not the primary goal.

It's not much of a creation if nobody sees it ... I mean, what's the point in creating some fantastic drawing if you can just scribble doodles? The "doing" is the same in both cases, and if nobody sees it then nobody's going to know the difference, so there's no point. Creating for an audience and getting feedback gives art a direction, and it allows the artist to push himself and become better at his craft. I think the process and the audience are equally important. But if you think creating experiences for others is "just a byproduct", you don't have to do that part, just don't expect to make any money with your scribbles.

Akalabeth:And what enables them to live their life doing what they love? Being paid for it.

Again, they're still being paid for it. Pirates don't prevent non-pirates from paying.

Akalabeth:One of the rationales in this thread for piracy is "why pay for a game that isn't very good".

Take the scenario where a talented but inexperienced game designer creates a game. It's a failure. Because it's a failure no one pays for it. Because no one pays for it, he doesn't make any subsequent games. And because he doesn't make any new games, he quits his career and all the great games he COULD HAVE made will no longer be made.

Compare this to the opposite. Guy makes a game, not very good. People pay for it. He has money to make a second. It's a better game. People pay for it. He has money to make a third. It's an even better game. People pay for it. He h as money to make a fourth. It's a brilliant game.

See, the problem is that the second sort doesn't happen. Nobody buys games they don't like. Pirates will just download everything because they can, non-pirates will research and play demos and things to make sure they're not wasting their money on a "not very good" game, and either way, the inexperienced designer will not make any money. That has nothing to do with piracy, it's just how free market works. The fact that he apparently gave up on his entire life's dream after just one failed attempt probably means his heart wasn't really into it, so that's for the best.

Akalabeth:I mean if someone's gonna pirate, then whatever, do what you're gonna do.But don't waste your time and mine telling me that what you do benefits anyone but yourself.

Take this scenario where a talented but inexperienced game designer creates a game. It's pretty damn good. But it doesn't sell very well, and the designer falls on troubled times. The reason is, of course, that only about three people in the world know that the game exists. It's hard to sell to an audience that doesn't know about your product.

Compare this to what actually happens. Guy makes a brilliant game, three people play it. One of them happens to be a pirate, and he decides he wants to share this excellence with the world, so he puts it up as a torrent. Three thousand other pirates see the game in the "recently uploaded" section of the torrent site, and decide to check it out. They all like the game too, and they all tell their friends about it. Let's say each pirate has, on average, one non-pirate friend (in reality it's probably more), so suddenly you have three thousand non-pirates who have heard about an excellent game from someone they personally trust. That's usually enough, so they go to check it out, and decide to buy it. The game does well, and things are looking good for the inexperienced designer.

Obviously this doesn't apply to all games (triple A titles that can actually afford marketing, in particular, don't reap this benefit), but most games do benefit from it. I'm not saying that this necessarily makes piracy an inherently good thing, but it certainly does have its helpful side.

Akalabeth:"There are problems in the world, and there's nothing we can do that will fix them, so why bother trying"

That's your philosophy in a nutshell.I don't agree.

Oh? In that case, what steps are you taking to fix it, yelling past pirates in forums? Very helpful, surely the world is bound to be changed by your efforts. I never said we shouldn't try to fix the problem, all I said was that trying to forcibly make people stop pirating or trying to guilt them out of pirating is clearly wasted effort, and we should look at solving the problem by other means. We should accept that pirates exist and that they always will exist, and we should focus on minimizing piracy rather than eliminating it, because the alternative is just headaches and wasted time.

I am perfectly fine with making someone who did something wrong in the past, which again you have pointed out many times, is illegal, suffer in the future. Especially since the person in question is saying that when he did it was fine, but all of us who do it now should be punished and should suffer for it.

And actually yes, I am perfectly fine with that kind of philosophy. He did something wrong, he took no issue with him doing it wrong, into adulthood he still says it was justified, but because it now effects him he doesn't want it to happen anymore. So no, I have no sympathy for him, I would if maybe, he would at least admit that what he did was wrong, but no. He says it was fine, it was justified.

And yea, I have learned something from him, if I say it is alright to do it, it is, as long as I feel it is.

You need to re-read the article.He doesn't say that what he did in the past was fine or not. He simply said it was a thing. To quote:

"When I was younger, downloading illegal copies was practically normal but this was mostly because global game distribution was in its infancy."

In fact, this statement is not even an admission that he himself was doing it. What he's saying that "in my youth, the practice of piracy was there." He doesn't say "in my youth, I downloaded games."

So, do you actually have a quote where he says "I downloaded games"? Because there isn't such a quote in the article. So either you're reading what you want to read, or you're simply misreading it, but either way your interpretation of what he explicity said is incorrect.